Rebel (The Renegades Book 3)

Penna

“Again,” Nick ordered.

“You know I love you, right?” I called out, sweat pouring down my back inside my gear. “But right now, I fucking hate your sadistic ass.”

“My sadistic ass is going to keep you alive,” he fired back.

I’d done at least twenty-five rounds on the minibike, landing every time, but he wanted another one. He was concerned about the height at which I started the flip, saying I wasn’t going soon enough, and it would cause me to under-rotate when I moved to the big bike.

“He’s right,” Pax answered.

“Not in the mood, Wilder!” I shouted, more than aware that I was being obstinate.

“Penna.” Landon waved me over, and I went, ripping off my helmet on the way and throwing the middle finger at Nick. At this rate I was going to be too tired to move to the big bike, and we only had one more day in Rio before heading up north. The expo was less than a month away.

“What’s up?” I asked, taking the bottle of water that Little John offered.

“Watch,” he said, offering me his phone.

I glanced at Cruz while he cued up the footage. He’d been pacing nearly all morning, alternating between watching me and blatantly looking away.

The footage started, and I saw myself speeding toward the ramp. Good speed. Good angle. Good execution.

“Shit,” I muttered, watching the flip start too late.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t pull the double with the full-size if I don’t start back here,” I said, rewinding to the point in the arc I’d need to begin the flip. “I won’t have the time to pull her back around like I do the mini.”

“Exactly.”

I groaned in frustration but put on my helmet and headed back to the mini.

“How the hell did you get her to listen?” Nick asked. “Because it’s not like she’s paying attention to anything I have to say.”

“She’ll only listen to herself when she gets like this,” Landon answered.

“Fuck you both!” I sang with a smile.

Cruz folded his arms and stood next to Landon, watching the same video and nodding.

He loved me. Really, truly loved me, and not like my parents—I wasn’t a pretty trophy for him. No, he was content to love me in silence, to take every risk for me—his career and reputation both on the line—while I handed him nothing but my body and heart in return.

But a month from now, that would all change.

We’d be off the cruise, and I’d graduate. Then we could get back to L.A. and start living our actual lives out in the open. East Coast, West Coast…we’d figure it out, and I would love him so well that he’d never once question what I’d put him through keeping this secret.

“You see it, too, don’t you?” I asked Cruz.

“Yeah,” he called out. “You just have to find that sweet spot where you don’t lose the height but can still pull the turn.”

“Right,” I said, loving that he understood the physics of it.

“Wait, so you’ll listen to him?” Nick yelled as I took the bike back to the start of the track.

“He’s not an asshole,” I said, blowing him a kiss.

“What’s she doing here?” Wilder asked as Miss Gibson walked onto the course.

“Nice to see you, Mr. Wilder,” she said with a flat smile.

“She’s here to replace me for the afternoon. I have a mandatory department meeting, so unless you guys want to call off your practice for the next few hours, she’s me,” Cruz explained.

“Great.” Wilder pointed Miss Gibson to where Little John sat. “You’ll need to sign some stuff with Little John.”

“I’ll take her over,” Cruz said. He sent me one long look, and with a curt nod, I pretended his leaving didn’t affect me, that we were just teacher/student, that I didn’t love him.

Blatantly ignoring Miss Gibson’s hand on his arm, I turned around. “I’m giving it another go,” I told Nick.

“If we get it right this time, do you think he’ll let us move to the big bikes?” Zoe asked as we walked back to the starting line.

I shrugged. “Not sure. But I know that I trust his judgment more than I do my hot head. You should do the same.”

“I’m ready.”

“You’re barely landing it. You skidded out last time.”

“So? I’m never going to know without going for it on the big bike, right?”

“True. Let’s see if we land these, and then we’ll have them move the pit in. Flipping a full-size is a whole different ball game, and you need to be ready.”

“Okay,” she said with a sigh.

I understood her frustration. When you were this close to something, to proving yourself, it was hard to take a step back and realize you had to go slower, that you weren’t as ready as you thought you were.

That’s why it was important to have Pax, Landon, and Nick on my side. Just like they had all day, they pulled me back before my ego wrote a check my ass couldn’t cash.

I lined up to the ramp and then gunned it, speeding down the paved track. Gear by gear, I amped up to full speed until I was almost flying when I hit the ramp.

I flew up the arc, nearly vertical before I went airborne. I started the flip when I felt my momentum shift, and then brought the bike around once. Twice. The world spun around me, and I pulled the bike back under me, nearly over-rotating before I brought it down on the other side of the ramp, the landing smooth but not perfect.

“Yes!” Nick yelled out with a fist pump.

I threw both arms into the air as I rode off the ramp, shouting victoriously.

The guys all hugged me as Zoe took her turn, racing toward the ramp.

“But it wasn’t…” Cruz shook his head.

“Perfect? Yeah, it’s because I need to add the weight of the real bike now. I’ve got the timing down. Shit,” I muttered as Zoe came down front-wheel heavy.

She landed it, but it wasn’t pretty.

“She probably needs another month or so on the mini, and she’s not going to want to hear it,” I told Cruz as Zoe came off the ramp cursing.

“A stubborn Renegade? Huh. That’s a new concept.”

“I’ll do better with my real bike,” she argued. “I know the weight. I know the feel, the way she reacts. This is fucking useless,” she tossed at Pax.

“This is the way it’s done, Zo. Penna fought for you to get the chance, and we’re happy to give it to you, but you have to follow the program.”

Muttering something under her breath, she started off toward the line of bikes.

“Guess she’s ready for a break,” I said to Cruz.

“I’m not, but I have to head back. You’re in good hands with Lindsay,” he said, nodding to where Miss Gibson went over paperwork with Little John. No doubt Pax would have her sign the full gamut of NDAs and liability waivers. The stuff with Gabe really got to him.

“Lindsay, huh?” I stared at my hands, pulling off my gloves.

Cruz’s laugh caught me completely off guard. “Don’t even. I’ll see you later.”

“Later,” I said to his retreating back. I love you. “Break for lunch?” I asked the guys.

They all agreed, and we headed toward the food truck. One thing Little John did even better than prepping for stunts was track down the best food in the area.

I got my lunch first and borrowed Landon’s phone, heading back to the ramp to watch the footage again. He was right. Sometimes the only way I’d listen was when I actually watched my own fuckups.

Maybe that’s what I needed to show Zoe, too.

Sinking into the camping chair, I dug into my lunch. The two-a-day workouts had turned me into an eating machine. Hitting play on the video, I watched my last jump, trying to reconcile my memories and feelings with what the tape showed.

A motor sounded at the end of the track, drawing my attention as I chewed my carnitas. Who the hell was down…?

Oh God.

I stood, my food falling to the dirt as Zoe sped toward the ramp at full speed, riding her full-size bike. My heart jumped into my throat.

This was going to go wrong, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I ran toward the ramp as fast as my legs could go. Her speed was good, her angle great, but she’d never pulled the kind of weight that two-hundred-and-twenty-pound bike was about to give her.

She hit the top and flew, throwing the bike back into the flip.

“Pull it!” I screamed, but it was too late.

She lost control of the bike, and her grip slipped. She was done.

Zoe fell from the highest possible point of her arc, and everything slowed for me on the ground. I couldn’t get there fast enough. Couldn’t freeze time. Couldn’t catch her or stop the bike.

She crashed into the backside of the ramp with a sickening thud as I reached the platform. I slid onto the ramp, skidding toward her as the bike came down, slamming into her leg with an audible crunch.

She let out a blood-curdling scream and reached for her upper thigh.

Just like me. Flashes of Dubai raced through my brain. The bike. The break. The light. Landon hovering above me. The pain.

The bike came at me and made impact before I could dodge, its tires raking down my side in a skin-rending sideswipe. I yelled out in pain as the bike kept moving, finally coming to a stop at the bottom of the ramp.

I staggered to my feet while holding my side and scrambled the rest of the distance to Zoe. Her shinbone distorted the lay of her pants, and her upper thigh was soaked in blood that was traveling down her leg at an alarming rate.

“Cruz!” I yelled. He would know what to do. He had medic training, right? He knew our safety plan. He isn’t here. “Landon! Pax!” I looked back to see the entire company of Renegades at a run toward us, a phone already at Little John’s ear.

“I’m dead! I’m dead!” Zoe screamed, voice shrill, her gloved hands covered in blood that smeared down her white jacket. I took off her goggles to see her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated.

Shock.

“You’re alive! Do you hear me? You’re alive. You couldn’t be screaming if you were dead!” I grabbed her hand with mine and her face with the other. I couldn’t reach much through the helmet, but it was her only exposed skin that I could touch so she could feel the contact.

Where was she bleeding from? God, there was so much of it. My hands ran over her thigh, where the blood was darkest. “Where else are you hurt? Jesus, what got you?”

“It was in my leg!” she yelled, handing me a piece of sharp, blood-covered metal from the bike.

“Oh my God, you pulled it out?” I dropped it.

“Holy fuck!” Landon yelled.

Finally.

He yanked the bike off the ramp and then hoisted himself onto the platform, coming at us at a run. “Little John has the EMTs coming from the entrance to the park.”

Thank God Cruz made us have them relatively on-site.

“Give me your knife.” I held out my hand, and he obliged.

Careful not to get her skin, I made a clean cut through the rough material from Zoe’s upper thigh all the way to her ankle, careful to navigate the built-in pads. “That’s an open fracture,” I said, pointing to where the bones tore through the skin.

Don’t vomit. You’ve seen worse.

I’d been worse. Wetness seeped through my pants, and I didn’t need to look to know it was Zoe’s blood.

More of the heavy liquid pulsed from a gash on her thigh.

“Take it!” Landon shoved a shirt at me, and I pushed it to the wound, applying all the pressure I could.

Zoe’s back came off the ramp as she screamed.

“Try to stay still!” We didn’t know what else was broken, and from the look of the red marks on her gear, she had other, smaller bleeds.

“Zoe!” Landon got in her face. “Zo! Listen to me!”

Her breath was haggard, but she stopped screaming.

“There you go. Look, you’ve got a nasty break and a really rough bleed, okay? But you’re going to be fine. EMTs are almost here. Penna’s got pressure on the wound, and you’re going to be fine. Penna, you gotta put more pressure.”

I pushed harder at the wound, blood already seeping through the shirt, and Zoe went limp. She’d blacked out.

Rapid Spanish echoed all around me, and I looked up to see several paramedics motioning for me to move.

“Penna, come on,” Landon said, taking me by the shoulders. I brushed my hair out of my face, only to pull my hands back and see they were covered in blood.

Looking down, the rest of me was, too.

“Get her checked out!” Pax yelled at Landon, already climbing the ramp to help the paramedics lift Zoe’s stretchered body down.

“I’m fine!” I yelled.

“Bullshit, I saw you take the hit!”

“This way, please,” an EMT gently guided my elbow. I started shaking, stumbling away from the scene.

“I’m fine,” I repeated, even as they sat me on the picnic table.

“Oh my God!” Miss Gibson said, placing her hand over her mouth as she looked at me.

“Where does it hurt?” the EMT asked, his eyes wide and concerned.

“She got hit in the side,” Landon said, motioning to my ribs.

“She can speak,” I snapped. Glancing down, I saw that the bike had ripped the shirt to shreds under my arm. “Damn, and I liked this set, too.” Not that I’d ever wear it again, anyway. I doubted the blood would come out. A hiss escaped as I started to take off my shirt, the fabric catching on the pads underneath.

“Can you lift your arms?” Landon asked softly.

I nodded, raising them above my head. He carefully stripped off the soft, long-sleeved shirt, leaving me in my protective jacket. It was one piece with sewn-in pads—not too bulky for movement.

“Out!” I snapped at a camera team that was filming a respectful three feet from my face.

“Rebel—”

“Get the fuck out,” Nick snapped from behind them. “She’s hurt, and you got that on film, but I’ll be damned if you’ll be filming my best friend in her bra so some perv can fill his spank-bank. She’s never done underwear shoots, and you won’t be the first—documentary or not, so get out.”

Over Landon’s shoulder, I saw Zoe being lifted into the ambulance.

Little John appeared next to Nick and then walked up to me and turned his back, crossing his arms in front of his gargantuan chest.

Rachel joined him, and I almost laughed. She was five-foot-nothing, so it was more symbolic, but I appreciated the gesture.

I unzipped my black and purple jacket and slid my arms out while Landon held it.

“Damn.” His eyes were locked on my red, raw rib cage.

“See, nothing to worry about,” I said. “Bad case of road rash…bike edition.”

The paramedic gently examined the injury, and though it felt like my skin had caught fire, I’d been through a hell of a lot worse.

“Nothing’s broken,” he said. “Very badly bruised. This is the only injury?”

“Yeah. The blood isn’t mine.”

“You’re very lucky,” he said as he finished checking out the area around the tire tracks. “All surface damage. Of course you might want an x-ray.”

“No, thank you. I know what broken ribs feel like, and mine are fine.”

“Penna, you okay?” Pax asked, pushing through my barricade. His gaze went straight to my side, but he still managed to toss Landon a shirt, which he immediately put on.

“I’m fine. It’s going to bloom into a gorgeous bruise, and my ribs are sore, but nothing’s broken.”

Unlike last time. God, what the hell was I doing?

“Why don’t you let the EMT tell you that,” Pax said.

“He just did. I’m fine.”

“Wilder!” someone called out from the ambulance.

“Go,” I told him. “Take Landon and go.”

“You’re sure? I don’t want to leave until we know you’re okay.”

I loved them like the brothers they were, but they weren’t the ones I wanted, anyway. I wanted Cruz, needed to feel his strong arms around me, hear his voice in my ear, and they weren’t exactly capable of giving me that.

“I’m sure. I have Nick, and Rachel, and Leah—”

“And me!” Little John shouted, his eyes still facing the ramp.

“And him.” I laughed, then hissed at the pain it caused.

“Go.” Go before I fall apart and you see what a wreck I really am.

“I’ll take her back to the boat,” Miss Gibson offered from the other side of Little John.

“And we’ll go with her,” Leah told Pax.

I saw the war raging in his eyes, the need to be with me—his sister—versus going with Zoe, who was severely injured. “Go. Now, dammit,” I instructed, taking the choice away.

His jaw flexed, but he finally agreed. “Just take care of yourself and rest. I’ll come back to the ship, or send someone when there’s news, but they think she’ll be okay.”

“Sounds good. I’ll follow you guys as soon as I get cleaned up.”

I wanted a shower—needed to scrub away the blood, the dirt, the memories of her screams, which mixed together with my screams in my head.

The EMT gave me some directions—nothing I hadn’t heard before—and I slipped one of Little John’s shirts over my head that came nearly to my knees. He drove us back to the ship in the SUV.

Adrenaline gone, my head started buzzing with the noise I tried hard to keep out. I shut my eyes against the barrage of images on endless repeat, but that only made them worse, so I focused on the road.

I could fall apart in private, but never here. Not with Miss Gibson in the car. Not where Leah and Rachel would tell Pax and Landon.

“Cruz is going to kill me,” Miss Gibson said.

I flinched at the sound of his name, at her right to publicly use it when I couldn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Leah reassured her, because that’s the kind of person she was.

Me? Not so much.

“He left me in charge for ten whole minutes, and look what happened,” she said, putting her head in her hands like she was the one who’d just had a motorcycle dropped on her.

But she wasn’t guilty, either.

“Stop. He’s not going to be mad. He knows there’s no contingency plan for stubborn and stupid,” I said, my voice scratchy and raw. “In our line of work…things happen. There’s no stopping someone else’s bad decision. Zoe wanted something she wasn’t ready for. This wasn’t your fault. Or his.”

Her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and I looked away, as if our secret was there on my forehead to be read.

“What are you thinking about?” Rachel asked Leah, who sat in the middle, softly shaking her head.

“Just…just something Brooke said when we were in Barcelona. It’s nothing.”

I tried to lock down every muscle, every reaction I could possibly have, but I still looked at her. “What did she say?”

Leah’s soft brown eyes met mine. “She said that everyone wants to be a Renegade until they know what it costs.”

Time, tears, broken bones, and broken hearts. She’d said it to me so many times, and I’d laughed her off, not realizing what she was trying to say.

Please quit.

Please walk away.

Please see what this does to the people around you.

But I didn’t quit. I kept going. Pax and Landon kept going. Even Nick, who’d paid a steeper price than the rest of us, kept pushing it.

And then she pushed back.

“She’s right,” I said, breaking the heavy silence. “Because no one sees the price. We’re so damn good at hiding it, even in the middle of a documentary.”

Sure, they saw the lights, the cameras, the roar of the crowd. They saw the stunts, the flips, even the falls. But they didn’t see the tears, self-doubt, scrutiny, and the months of rehab and recovery. They skipped that part until the comeback.

I didn’t want to visit the infirmary, but my friends teamed up with Miss Gibson against me, and I gave in, knowing it would take ten times longer to argue with them. I held it together through the wait, counting the ceiling tiles to keep my mind busy and off what had just happened. After I’d been checked out and cleared by the ship’s doctor, Miss Gibson finally left us, and we headed for the suite.

No doubt she was going straight to the dean now that she’d covered her ass and had me checked out again. Heads turned as Rachel, Leah, and I took the elevator, then walked down the hall. I kept my eyes on the floor, well aware that I looked like something out of The Walking Dead.

Rachel slid our key through the lock, and when the little light went green, my composure bit the dust. I stumbled through our hallway, only to lean back against the wall and slide to the floor.

“I’ll take care of her,” Rachel told Leah. “Maybe go pack a bag for Zoe? Hugo should know how to get into her room.”

I drew my knees to my chest, uncaring that the skin on my side felt like it was being shredded as I moved.

With Leah gone, Rachel dropped down in front of me. “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The answer was automatic, rote, the same one I’d given time and again after the accident.

“You’re not fine. What can I do?”

“I’m fine,” I repeated.

There was a pounding at the door, and Rachel sighed, then left to answer it. “Hey, Doc. Yeah, she’s here.”

“Cruz?” I asked, my voice tiny.

He pushed past Rachel, his eyes wild, growing even more panicked when he saw me. “Penelope. Oh God.” He hit his knees in front of me, brushing my hair back. “Lindsay said you got hit. We have to get you to the hospital.”

“No, I’m fine. I got checked out. It’s not mine…the blood.”

“Which side?” he asked. Not that I could blame him. The blood was everywhere.

“This one.” I motioned with my head.

“Okay.”

My eyes slid shut, and I felt his arms surround, then lift me carefully, keeping my injured side in the clear. Just that small amount of contact and my muscles relaxed, as if they got the message that I was safe now, that he would somehow make everything better even though my ribs still screamed.

“It’s okay, baby. I got you,” he said, his lips against my forehead.

He kicked open my bedroom door.

“Ummm…” Rachel stepped forward.

“I’ve got her,” he told her.

“Penna?”

“It’s okay,” I told her as he prepared to shut the door in her face.

“Apparently,” she said softly, her eyes wide.

He set me down on the bed, then turned on the shower. Once the water was warm, he stripped me to my toes, cursing at the damage he found on my side.

“Tires,” I muttered. “I just need to get it clean and gooped up with antibacterial ointment with some bandages. I’ve been through it before, I’ll go through it again.”

He gathered me in his arms and lifted me against his chest.

“I can walk,” I said softly, but tucked my head onto his shoulder.

“I need to carry you. Please just let me.”

I’d been hurt plenty of times in my life, but I’d never been taken care of like this, or rather never let anyone take care of me.

He carried me to the large shower, walking in fully clothed. The water cascaded down my body in red streams, and he gently washed my face, my hair, then my torso. When he got to the tire tracks, he couldn’t have been more careful with me.

He turned off the water and then wrapped me in one of the giant, fluffy white towels, patting me dry. Then I slipped into my terry bathrobe while he put on a set of dry clothes he kept in my one of my drawers.

Then he peeled back my robe, lathered me with ointment, and joked that we were going to need the economy-size bottle.

I didn’t bother to tell him that Landon’s parents owned that company, so we wouldn’t run out anytime soon. He applied gauze, wrapped my torso like a mummy, and put me to bed, tucking me into the curve of his body.

“Painkillers?” he asked.

“They offered. I declined. The pain isn’t too bad compared to other injuries.”

“You sure?”

“You know what happened?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Lindsay gave me the gist.”

“I didn’t know what she was doing until it was too late.”

“I know.”

“No one could have stopped her.”

“Penelope, this isn’t your fault. You know that, right?” He stroked my hair back from my face.

My eyes prickled, and I blinked quickly. “I should have seen what was going on. Should have known what she was thinking. I was right there with her. I said I’d help her after lunch, and then I turned my back for a second. How did I not see what she was going to do? Why didn’t she tell me? She should have told me.”

He gathered me tighter and kissed my forehead. “You had no way of knowing what she was thinking or what she would do.”

“I should have. She’s just like me, and when I want something, there’s nothing I won’t do to get it. Look at the position I’ve put you in, right now.”

“I am exactly where I want to be,” he assured me.

“Why didn’t I see it? There were so many signs. If I had just taken the time and listened to her, or paid the slightest attention, I would have seen it. I should have known. Out of everyone, I’m the one who should have known.”

Cruz rolled until he hovered above me. “You are not responsible for the choices other people make. This is not your fault. Dubai was not your fault. Zoe is not Brooke.”

My throat tightened, and several moments passed before I could speak.

“I can’t talk about her to them. Not after everything she did. It’s like there’s this giant portion of my heart that’s slowly dying, all blackened and ugly, and they won’t understand. I chose them. I always choose them. But there’s this part of me that says I should have chosen my sister, and I can’t even tell them that I miss her.”

“You can tell me.”

There it was. Pax, Landon, Leah, Rachel…they all belonged to one another. Coupled off, but still part of the whole. Cruz was mine only. His loyalty was to me, and not to the Renegades. It was mind-blowing to be someone’s priority.

“She won’t even talk to me,” I whispered. “My best friend. I keep making all these excuses for her—for my parents letting her hide behind those walls like I’m some kind of threat to her recovery. I’m the one she nearly killed. I’m the one who spent months in that cast, and yet I’m the danger. I’m the outcast because I drove her to what she did.”

He lay next to me and reached for my hand. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t I? I’m the one who met Pax and Landon, eventually introduced her to Nick…and then Patrick. She should have been at ballet, or football games, or anywhere else. Instead she was at a skate park with me, or at Renegade Ranch.”

“All her choices.”

“Should I have left? When everything happened in Dubai? Should I have gone home? Helped her? Yelled at her? Maybe, but all I could think was that I wanted to be around family, and for me…they’re all here.”

“You made the choice that was right for you at the time, and doubting it now doesn’t change the fact that it was right when you made it. You needed these guys.”

“But I needed her, too,” I whispered. My eyes blurred as a tear escaped, tracking to the pillow as I rolled to look at Cruz. “I couldn’t tell them that, not after everything she’d done. Even after I almost died, after what happened to Pax, to Leah…I still miss her every day.”

“She’s your sister.”

“She betrayed me. Betrayed us all.”

“That doesn’t mean that you don’t still love her. You’re allowed to love her, Penelope. It’s one of the things I love most about you—your capacity for acceptance and forgiveness.”

“But I don’t forgive her.” I whispered my darkest secret. “I love her. I miss her, but I don’t forgive her. How can I when I don’t understand, when she won’t tell me?”

“That’s a choice you’re going to have to make now. That’s what this all is: a sequence of choices. You have to step back and decide if you’re going to let what your sister did change you—take away this sport you love so much.”

“What if it already did?”

His smile was beautiful. “It didn’t. I saw you up there. The drive. The determination. The process of it all. You are a Renegade through and through. That need for adrenaline, to prove yourself, to be the best—it’s all still there under that layer of doubt that you let Brooke put there, and that’s your choice. Just like you decide right now if you’ll let this incident with Zoe put another layer on, or if you’ll see it for what it was—a stupid choice by an overly ambitious girl. Neither of their choices change who you are unless you let them, and you are still Rebel.”

“How can you be so sure when I’m not?”

“That’s why you have me—to show you the parts of yourself that you can no longer see.”

God, I loved him. Wholehearted, full-soul, forever kind of love. I was completely wrong for him, not just in our five-year age difference but in my profession. Cruz was built to protect, to stand between his woman and any danger that might find her. I was the girl who frequently called danger to the playground and challenged it to a game of chicken. But that didn’t stop me from loving him, from recognizing the gift he was.

“Are you sorry you fell in love with me?”

“There’s nothing you could do that would ever make me sorry for loving you, Penelope. Now rest. We’ll check on Zoe in a little bit.”

“Rachel knows about us now.” I burrowed closer to him until I could hear his heartbeat beneath my ear.

“Yeah, I would assume she does.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Pray that you know her as well as you think you do,” he said as I drifted off.